THE RODRIGUEZ COSA NOSTRA TRIES TO PLUG THE DIKE

By Juan Montoya
Not content with having had their cake for the last 40 odd years living it up at the Brownsville Independent School District, Athletic Director Joe Rodriguez and his minions are trying at all costs to keep the truth from the Brownsville residents who have subsidized their entire professional lives.

In the latest move to keep district taxpayers in the dark, Rodriguez’s legal team went before 444th District Court Judge David Sanchez Wednesday to get orders of deposition for BISD board member Catalina Presas-Garcia, Accion America President Carlos Quintanilla and (ready?) El Rrun Rrun Blog writer Juan Montoya.

Rodriguez, et al, want to know how it was that Presas-Garcia, Quintanilla and Montoya got hold of two reports written on alleged wrongdoing by Rodriguez while he has been athletic director. More specifically, the Rodriguez hitmen want to know the source of the reports and how these three people got them.

Copies of the reports – which by the way have been circulating locally and in cyberspace for months – were turned over to the Cameron County District Attorney’s office by Presas-Garcia so he could investigate the allegations of abuse of district (public) resources and personnel to benefit Rodriguez’s fundraising efforts on behalf of his nonprofit.

The nonprofit used district resources and personnel to raise funds for give two scholarships annually to each of the five high schools. However, the amounts raised were nowhere near the totals handed out. There have even been reports that some of that money ended up in private bank accounts.

AcciónAmerica president Carlos Quintanilla said his organization was mailed the reports along with a Freedom of Information Act request from the office of Public Information Officer Drue Brown.

"We opened the envelope up and there they were," he said. "We don't know who gave them to Cata. From what we can tell, a lot of people got those reports. We didn't give them to Cata."

In a posting called Monday, October 12 AccionAmerica Battles BISD Mano-a-Mano, El Rocinante also posted a comment that listed a GMail address where readers could obtain the reports. That address was .http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3Y95w_cDQ6CMTUyNWFjZDMtOTAzMC00OWFkLWExYzUtNWZkZDhkNGE3NGU1&hl=en .
Now, we don't know why the Rodriguez Dream Team is so aghast at letting people in the district know what the AD has been doing with their money all this time, but we agree with the Texas Attorney General's Office that theses public documents relating to a public employee, and paid with public funds should be open to the public.
Is there something wrong with that?

They forum shopped for the right judge(David Sanchez) to give them everything they wanted. They shopped wisely, for Sanchez, who was placed as Democratic chairman by former County Judge Gilbert Hinojosa, was then anointed to the 444th by the same machine. He won against longtime judge Gilbert Rosas, much to every one's surprise.

When El Rrun-Rrun listed the links to the reports, we urged Coach Joe to Email us his response. After all, Rodriguez wrote (of course it wasn't him!) in a lengthy article in the Brownsville Herald complaining that the his responses weren't included in the reports that Presas-Garcia forwarded to the DA.

Now, after all that, he wants to make her seem like the spoilsport in all this.
Coach, you've been milking a loss to Seguin in the late 1960s as your ticket to run amok as a cacique in the district for decades. Now that the jig is up, you want to keep the patronage going through your descendants. Isn't it time to give it up and just go quietly away?

We don't want to hear about the football player who was injured when you went to visit him at the hospital and all he wanted to know was whether the Golden Eagles had won the game. Yeah, I know, it makes me want to cry, too, just like you do after a few beers at the bar and keep telling that story over and over again.
We want to know what's up with the reports and why you and your underlings want to keep them under wraps at all costs. If you have nothing to hide, let them out. If you don't, the opposite applies.
P.S. Those Southmost gals are tough, Joe. Be careful.